7 key moments from historic US government hearing on UFOs

It was like a scene straight out of The X Files.

This week, the US Congress held a hearing on claims the government is covering up secrets relating to UFOs.

Lawmakers heard from three key witnesses, including David Grusch, the former intelligence official-turned-whistleblower who claimed the US has possession of “intact and partially intact” alien vehicles.

UFOs have already shot back into the public consciousness in recent years, with the US military saying it is actively investigating a number of reported sightings.

And while there were no new revelations that aliens do, in fact, exist, there were some extraordinary claims from witnesses – and several other incredible moments. Here are the biggest takeaways.

Has the government found aliens on Earth?

Grusch told the hearing that he is “absolutely” certain the government is in possession of UAPs, citing interviews he said he conducted with 40 witnesses over a four-year period.

The whistleblower led analysis of unexplained anomalous phenomena (UAP) – that’s the new official phrase for UFOs – at a US Department of Defense agency until 2023.

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Asked by a congressman how the government’s work on this is funded, Grusch claimed the effort is “above congressional oversight” and bankrolled by a “misappropriation of funds”.

Grusch underscored that he has not personally spotted a UAP. However, he told the panel that he knows of “multiple colleagues” who were injured by UAPs.

He also said he has interviewed individuals who have recovered “nonhuman biologics” from crashed UAPs.

Grusch said he prefers to use the term “nonhuman” rather than alien or extraterrestrial.

Asked by Republican Eric Burlison to substantiate the claim, Grusch said he could not divulge specific details, once again claiming the information was too sensitive to share with the public.

He did, however, describe the nature of what he saw: “I have to be very careful here ... [but] what I personally witnessed, myself and my wife, was very disturbing.”

Former intelligence worker David Grusch gives testimony on UFOsDrew Angerer/Getty Images

A “multi-decade” cover-up

Grusch told the hearing that the government had carried out a “multi-decade” program to collect, and reverse-engineer, crashed UFOs.

However, he claimed he had been denied access to secret government UFO programs, and said he has faced “very brutal” retaliation since making his allegations.

He claimed he knew about “people who have been harmed or injured” as part of government attempts to cover up UFO information.

Congressman Tim Burchett asked Grusch if he has heard of anyone being murdered as part of the alleged cover-up. The former intelligence official said: “I directed people with that knowledge to the appropriate authorities.”

And there’s more

Grusch wasn’t the only former senior official to testify. David Fravor, a former navy commander, recalled seeing a strange object in the sky while on a training mission in 2004.

He said he and three fellow military pilots spotted a white Tic-Tac-shaped object hovering below their jets and just above the Pacific Ocean.

He claimed the unidentified aircraft, which he said had no visible rotors, wings or exhaust, then began to climb and approach his fighter jet. He said that the UAP then vanished, only to reappear a few seconds later, but this time it was spotted 60 miles away.

Fravor said the technology he and his team encountered defies logical explanation. “The technology that we faced is far superior to anything that we had. And there’s nothing we can do about it, nothing.”

…And still more

Meanwhile, Ryan Graves, a retired navy pilot who has since founded Americans for Safe Aerospace, a UAP non-profit, claimed that he saw UAP off the Atlantic coast “every day for at least a couple years”.

These sightings were “not rare or isolated”, he said, and were seen by military aircrews and commercial pilots “whose lives depend on accurate identification”.

Graves said UAP objects had been seen “essentially where all navy operations are being conducted across the world”.

When asked if there were any common characteristics to the UAPs that pilots had cited, he said they were “dark grey or black cubes inside of clear sphere” where “the apex or tips of the cube were touching the inside of the sphere”.

Pentagon denies

The Pentagon denied Grusch’s cover-up claims. In a statement, a defense department spokesperson said investigators had not found “any verifiable information to substantiate claims that any programs regarding the possession or reverse-engineering of extraterrestrial materials have existed in the past or exist currently”.

Audience unconvinced

Not everyone was taken in by Grusch’s testimony, either. At times, he seemed less willing to share information under oath than in interviews with the media.

For example, in an interview with NewsNation in June, Grusch said the government had a very large, “like a football-field kind of size” alien craft, while he told Le Parisien, a French newspaper, that the US had possession of a “bell-like craft” which Benito Mussolini’s government had recovered in northern Italy in 1933.

However, he was reluctant to go into details on these claims, citing issues of security.

Garrett Graff, a journalist and historian who is writing a book on the government’s hunt for UFOs, tweeted: “Very interesting to me that Dave Grusch is unwilling to state and repeat under oath at the #UFOHearings the most explosive – and outlandish – of his claims from his NewsNation interview. He seems to be very carefully dancing around repeating them.”

New laws to follow

In his closing remarks, Republican congressman Glenn Grothman said the hearing was “illuminating” and said he believed legislation would come next.

Grothman, the chair of the House subcommittee on national security, the border and foreign affairs, added: “Obviously, I think several of us are going to look forward to getting some answers in a more confidential setting. I assume some legislation will come out of this.”

Whatever comes out of this startling hearing, one thing is for sure: the truth is out there.

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